This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

When we think of basement apartments, many of us think the worst: dark, dank, cramped, low-ceilinged, prone to flooding. One friend of mine described it as a feeling of being buried underneath a house, as though in a coffin. Bad feng shui all around. I know people who will never go to look at any available unit labeled “basement,” no matter how promising the description.

There are exceptions to the stereotype, though, and 30-year-old Estelle Sun and 31-year-old Imran Rahaman found one. Located on King St. W. not far from Roncesvalles, it’s just shy of 700 square feet yet the owner of the house worked magic on a small space, employing every trick in the interior designer’s book.

As Sun shows me through, I’m impressed by how bright it seems. At the south end, a large window has been installed that stretches above ground level, letting daylight pour into the living room and reflect off the pale hardwood. There also seems to be an unusual abundance of electric lights of various kinds.

Sun, who not long ago was laid off from her job co-ordinating research and policy for a social and public policy think tank, and Rahaman, director of operations at Suite 66, an online media sales firm, had most recently been living on the 18th floor of an apartment building on Queens Quay across from Harbourfront. It was big and had a beautiful view of the lake but the couple didn’t feel like they lived in a real neighbourhood.

“That’s why we began specifically looking for an apartment in a house,” says Sun. “In theory, we didn’t have a problem with a basement apartment until we looked at several of them and they were all hideous. But there were pictures of this place with the advertisement and it looked nice. I wasn’t able to go to the showing but Imran was impressed and later said there were a lot of other people all saying, ‘wow, what a great basement apartment.’ ”

Article Continued Below

Filling out the application form, Sun and Rahaman went all out, including a “top-10-reasons-we’d-be-great-tenants” to show their suitability and sense of humour. Soon, they were downsizing — they owned an 11-foot sectional sofa — and moving in.

What attracted them to the unit didn’t happen accidentally. There are tricks to making a basement apartment seem brighter and more spacious than it is and Janice Lindsay used them all. An interior colour and design consultant who runs PINK Colour + Design (janicelindsay.com), Lindsay owns a couple of investment properties with her husband. With the basement apartment in this one, she wanted to make it nice enough that “I’d want to live in it or be happy to let my children live in it.”

The challenge? “The apartment is very long and narrow so I struggled to make it not feel like a tunnel,” she says. “In the design I worked on ways to make it ‘bend’ left and right.”

She admits she went a little overboard with the number of lights, judiciously locating them in strategic places and including dimmers. “I think more than 50 per cent of what makes a place feel comfortable and warm is light.”

She used the same soft white paint throughout the unit — “Pittsburgh Paints’ Winter Mood 512-1,” she says, “the perfect basement colour” — breaking it up only at the Ikea kitchen, which has a dark theme, creating a “zone” off the living room. Here she used a soft grey paint so at night it has the ambience of a bar, perfect for dinner parties. The highlight? Painting the ceiling above the kitchen lemon yellow, “like a whack of sunshine.”

Lindsay also had radiant heating installed in the flooring, providing an even warmth and eliminating the dreaded drafty corners common to most basement apartments.

Sun and Rahaman find it perfectly comfortable and it suits their needs at this time in their lives. Sun is actively looking for work in her field but she and Rahaman also have a couple of long-range dreams. One is a web site dedicated to identifying and evaluating the best sources for organic, sustainable food in Toronto (they’ve gone as far as creating a Twitter account, twitter.com/gofoodhero); the other is an eco-lodge in Guyana, where Rahaman has dual citizenship.

“One reason we rent is because we’re at an age where we may end up pursuing job opportunities in another city or country,” says Sun. “The rent here is affordable and we’re able to save money.”

Not that they don’t feel some pressure from friends and family. Laughing, Sun says, “My parents are from Hong Kong, where real estate is a really big deal. My dad is an architectural renderer and my mom a banker. The house they bought in North York in the 1980s is now worth eight times what they paid for it. So my parents are certainly telling us we should buy a house.”

Sun admits she and Rahaman have read about both sides of the renting versus owning debate and finds there is no clear consensus. One thing is clear, though: home ownership is a big commitment.

“We know about hidden costs and the time and labour needed to maintain and improve a home,” she says. “Right now I feel like we have a lot of freedom. I’m able to look for work knowing that we can cover our costs. And we live in a fantastic place. Everyone who visits is impressed, and not just because they all have crappy expectations of what to expect when we tell them it’s a basement apartment.”

David Hayes is an author and award-winning feature writer who has been a renter most of his life. If you have stories or information to share about renting, he can be reached at lifelong_renter@sympatico.ca.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com